ScotE3 has been working with other organisations in the Global Climate Jobs Network, the Alternative Information and Development Centre (South Africa) and Climaximo and Empregos para o Clima (Portugal), on a proposal for a technical conference to be held in March 2022.
Call for Papers
Climate jobs and green new deal movements are springing up around the world. This is a call for papers for an international conference on the technical aspects of the jobs that will be necessary, in 10th, 11th and 12th March 2022.
The conference will be on zoom, over three days, and contributors will be able to participate from all continents. We want papers from engineers, scientists, system modellers, designers, architects, planners, educators and trainers, foresters, soil scientists, trade union researchers, NGO researchers and other specialists.
The Climate Jobs Approach
We want contributors to think about the technical and technological implications of a “climate jobs” approach. This approach involves several features:
Massive government spending on public sector, direct employment to make possible reductions of 95% in CO2 emissions, and deep reductions in other emissions, within 20 years. In South Africa or Britain, this would be something like one million jobs a year, or in the United States 8 million jobs.
People who lose their jobs in old, high carbon industries would be guaranteed training and well paid, permanent work in climate jobs.
The work would begin from year one, starting with training a new workforce and shovel ready projects. Over twenty years many new technologies would become possible.
Public sector bodies would share intellectual property across borders.
Profits would be less important. Technologies that are necessary but currently “unrealistic”, could be developed rapidly at scale even if the cost was very high for many years. For example, alternative methods of making steel, substitutes for cement, or expensive forms of renewable energy like marine power and concentrated solar could enter mass production.
We could also move beyond the market, with regulations of many sorts. So we could think about the sort of rail, bus and electric system needed if all flights of 5,000 kilometres or less were banned. Or what could be done if we banned the manufacture of concrete, or F-gases?
Or contributors to think about the details, and the implications, of a building code that required new buildings to have greatly reduced energy use, and to burn no fossil fuels for heating or cooking. In this, we would like not only papers that argue this would be a good idea but think about how that code would be worded in different places, and what technologies and materials would be required, and what research would be required.
For more information about the conference, possible topics, how to participate and the deadline for submitting abstracts please download the full call for papers.
Employment, Energy and Environment 